A coalition of liberal activists and Democratic lawmakers has launched a national campaign against President Trump’s infrastructure program that accuses him of attempting to privatize the country’s highways, bridges and other public assets.

There’s one problem: The federal government doesn’t own most of that stuff.

By one measure, state and local governments and the private sector own 97 percent of the nation’s nondefense infrastructure, and they fund 94 percent of it, according to a report by Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

The report examined data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis that showed the federal government owned $1.5 trillion of nondefense infrastructure, compared with $10.1 trillion for state and local governments and $40.7 trillion for the private sector.

Still, the Millions of Jobs Coalition is looking for at least $1 trillion of direct federal spending to repair and replace American infrastructure, which has degraded to 12th in the world, according to the World Economic Forum.

“Donald Trump wants to sell off our roads to foreign governments and give taxpayer dollars to Wall Street billionaires, and he calls that job creation?” said Rep. Mark Pocan, Wisconsin Democrat and a member of the coalition....

The two sides couldn’t be further apart as the debate digs into the central question of the role of the federal government that divides liberals and conservatives.

The federal government’s meager holdings include features such as dams, postal buildings and the air traffic control system. But highways — including the entire interstate highway system — roads, bridges and schools are owned by local and state governments.

The country’s vast array of pipelines, power stations, railways, factories and telecommunications networks are owned by businesses, according to the report.

Mr. Trump’s proposals — including a push to privatize the air traffic control system and use public-private partnerships to finance some construction projects — fueled the left’s accusations of a sell-off....

There is more.

This looks like Democrats are desperate to stop the Trump administration from getting credit for fixing the infrastructure program. They are either ignorant of the ownership issue or they are engaging in the politics of fraud in an attempt to stop the projects.

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